Expenditures on information technology (IT) have risen over the past twenty years to the point where they are almost always a significant amount in the capital budget of any enterprise. These enterprises include business enterprises, and may also include non-for-profit businesses, charitable institutions, religious institutions, educational establishments, governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, and other organizations of many types.
The expenditures are not only for computers and their software, but also for making disparate computers and information technology applications and systems work together. Once systems are established, servers of several varieties may be used, as well as other software, networks, computers and peripherals. Businesses typically invest a large amount of capital in making new systems and applications work with an existing system and periodically need to upgrade components of an existing system to better serve the businesses' customers with advanced technology.
In the past, organizations have built applications on specific hardware and software technologies like networks, servers, operating systems, database, application development models and specific end user access devices. The customized infrastructure and architecture provided users with applications that did not communicate with one another. While the initial intent of the application systems were to meet a specific set of functionality, eventually these different application systems needed to be integrated. Technology today provides many different ways to integrate applications and systems.
There is a need, therefore, to construct an IT framework that provides a way of identifying and selecting a correct integration solution.